Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/47

Rh Afterwards her son, getting a wife, had children, and became rich. His descendants are living to this day.—(Translated literally. Told by Penri, 21st July, 1886.)

A certain thickly populated village was governed by six chiefs, the oldest of whom lorded it over the other five. One day he made a feast, brewed some rice-beer, and invited the other five chiefs, and feasted them. When they were departing, he said: "To-morrow each of you must tell me the dream which he shall have dreamt over-night; and if it is a good dream I will buy it."

So next day four of the chiefs came and told their dreams. But they were all bad dreams, not worth buying. The fifth, however, did not come, though he was waited for at first, and then sent for several times. At last, when brought by force, he would not open his lips. So the senior chief flew into a rage, and caused a hole to be dug in front of the door of his own house, and had the man buried in it up to his chin, and left there all that day and night.

Now the truth was that the senior chief was a bad man, that the junior chief was a good man, and that this junior chief had forgotten his dream, but did not dare to say so. After dark, a kind god came and said: "You are a good man. I am sorry for you, and will take you out of the hole." This he did; and, at that very moment, the chief remembered how he had dreamt of having been led up the bank of a stream through the woods to the house of a goddess who smiled beautifully, and whose room was carpeted with skins; how she had comforted him, fed him plenteously, and sent him home in gorgeous array, and with instructions for deceiving and killing his enemy, the senior chief. "I suppose you remember it all now," said the god; "it was I who caused you to forget it, and thus saved you from having it bought by the wicked senior chief, because I am pleased with the way in which you keep the privy clean, not even letting grass grow near it. And now I will show you the reality of that of which before you saw only the dream-image."